


Následky

by LinksLipsSinkShips



Series: Kinktober [14]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Anger, Infidelity, Kinktober Kind Of, M/M, What Happened After Rhett Went to Slovakia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 03:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20846597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinksLipsSinkShips/pseuds/LinksLipsSinkShips
Summary: Link is furious that Rhett left him to go to Slovakia, but Rhett can't get over what Link's proposal to Christy means for their future.





	Následky

**Author's Note:**

> Now where's your picket fence love  
And where's that shiny car  
And did it ever get you far  
You never seemed so tense love  
I've never seen you fall so hard  
Do you know where you are  
And truth be told I miss you
> 
> -Gives You Hell, All American Rejects

Link couldn’t handle it. He was trying, but he couldn’t. The breakdown in communication sent his head spinning and now he was pissed off. “I begged you. I  _ begged _ and you went anyway.” He wasn’t going to cry. He’d already told himself he wasn’t going to cry. Why should he? Why shed any more tears over this than he’d already shed? Why spend more time worked up over this than he had already? His entire trip to Nashville had been a big sobfest as it was. The second his host went to work, he’d go for a walk, cry his eyes out, and fall asleep somewhere. That depression peaked the day he took a nap on the steps of a museum, instead of seeing the museum at all.

So no. Link Neal was not shedding another tear over Rhett leaving. He didn’t want to. Instead, he was mad. Not sad. Not depressed or frustrated or lonely. Angry.

“I went figuring you were gonna wait.”

“So you left me thinking that things would be exactly the same as they were when I left? You went thinking I was going to sit around and wait and kick my boots in the dirt going, ‘damn, I wish Rhett were here right now?’ Is that what you wanted?”

“No! That’s not—I just didn’t think you were going to propose.” Rhett, on the other hand, had tears in his eyes. The sadness was just sinking in for him, the start of the feelings Link had felt all along.

A part of Link was happy with that.  _ Good. Let him feel abandoned the same way I did.  _ It was replaced quickly with the anger. “You wanted it both ways, Rhett. You always do! You wanted to go off across a freakin’ ocean, have the time of your life in Slovakia, meet new friends, all of it, then come back home and be all, ‘hey, Link, buddy, pal, let’s go do something fun.’ That’s how you  _ are,  _ Rhett. Expecting everybody else to wait around for you and your big ideas and your goals and dreams and hopes. But okay. I’m the bad guy here.”

“I didn’t say you were a bad guy!” Rhett shot back, brushing away his tears with the back of his hand. “I didn’t. I said that I think it’s real rich that you were talking about making big life choices without the other one’s input, and then you end up  _ proposing  _ to Christy without saying a word to me.”

“You knew we were dating! How could you not see it coming, Rhett?”

“I guess I just figured that was the kind of thing you’d wait for. That you’d wait for my help or—”

“Your  _ help?  _ What the hell would I need your help for? You think you’re that essential to my life that I can’t even ask my girlfriend to marry me without going over it with you? Yeah, okay, Rhett. Mr. Indispensable.” He glared at Rhett, tugging at his hair, which was just starting to grow out after so long shaving it.

“Not my help! Dang it, Link, you know what I mean! My support, my ear to bounce stuff on, or heck, even if you didn’t need me, we could’ve celebrated together! We could have gone out for sodas or something as I tell you how freakin’ excited I am for you!” Rhett yelled. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.

“Oh yeah? You’re  _ excited?  _ Could’ve fooled me, man.” Link walked over and shoved him. “I can tell how excited you are when I tell you that I’m freakin’ engaged and you  _ yell  _ at me.”

Rhett grasped his wrists hard and looked at him. “Shut the hell up, Neal. You don’t know a dang thing about how I feel.”

“Oh yeah? Like you ever knew how I did!”

“You think you know more about how I feel than I know about how you feel? Really? You think I’m stupid?” Rhett asked, shoving Rhett back by the wrists, the awkward angle sending Link sprawling onto the floor.

“Asshole!” Link screamed.

“Jerk! You don’t have the slightest idea.”

This time when Link lunged at him, Rhett was ready, shoulder colliding with Link’s stomach until they were both on the floor.

“Tell me how I felt, then!” Link screamed, kicking his legs and trying to get free from him.

“You felt angry that I left.”

“I just told you that!”

“You ever think about why?” Rhett asked him. “You ever stop and think ‘why does Rhett leaving have such an impact on me that I feel the need to spontaneously propose to Christy?’”

“What are you tryin’ to say, Rhett?” Link asked, throwing himself back on the ground. There was no sense in fighting. The more he fought, the more Rhett wanted to fight, so he gave up, sinking back onto the floor and letting Rhett pin him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you can sit here and tell me that this is what you wanted and keep telling me until your face turns blue, but you and I both know if I wouldn’t have left, you wouldn’t be punishing me the way you are now,” Rhett says, slamming Link’s wrists against the floor not because he could, because he had the strength and the leverage.

“So you’re saying I proposed to punish you? For  _ what?  _ What the hell would I be punishing you for?” Link demanded. “Why?”

“Because I love you, you idiot!” Rhett screamed, inches from his face, so loud that his eardrums reverberated with the sound. “Because you knew that, and then I went to Slovakia to forget it, and instead of finding some way to follow me, you proposed to Christy.”

“Follow you?” Link shouted, pushing Rhett off of him and kicking him in the ribs. “Follow? How could you sit here and say something so stupid?” The feelings of fury bubbled in his stomach and a part of him wanted to spit on Rhett, to walk away and throw away a decade and a half of friendship. Instead, he backed away, scrambling as far away as he could. “Stop! Just  _ stop _ .”

Link wasn’t entirely sure why he was so angry.

Maybe it was because Rhett left and still thought he could dictate what Link did.

Maybe it was because Rhett was an ass who thought that Link’s life should revolve around his choices.

More likely though, it was that Rhett was completely, one hundred percent, absolutely right.

Link just couldn’t say as much. So he stood, glued to the wall, staring at Rhett.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Rhett said, tone of voice shifting as he stood up from the ground.

“You’re wrong,” Link said, voice wavering.

“Tell me like you actually believe it.”

“Shut up. You don’t know what I believe or what I think. You don’t know me. You don’t!” Link protested. “Maybe you did, but then you ran off to Slovakia and now you  _ don’t  _ so just stop it.”

Rhett took a step closer. “Tell me! Tell me that it’s not how you feel and I’ll stop it!”

Link stood there and stared. He saw the pleading look in Rhett’s eyes, the way he looked at Link desperate for him to stop, to make this end one way or another. But Link couldn’t say it. He wasn’t going to lie to his best friend, not like this, not in this way. Instead, he looked in his eyes, opened his mouth, and managed to choke out the words, “I hate you.”

“What?”

“I hate you.”

Rhett got right into Link’s face then, glaring down at him. “You don’t hate me.”

“I do!” Link said, shoving Rhett’s chest. “I do hate you.”

“Why?”

“I hate how you make me feel,” Link says. “How I have everything all sorted out and then there you are, making me feel like  _ this _ and I’m angry.” His fingers curl around Rhett’s shirt, no longer a shove, but a grasp. “I’m so freakin’ pissed off at you.”

“I’m pissed off at me too. I’m pissed off at me and I’m pissed off at you,” Rhett said. He didn’t have to say why. Link knew.

“Then what the hell are you gonna do about it?” Link asks, still gripping at Rhett’s shirt.

Rhett narrowed his eyes, grasping Link’s wrist, and clenching his jaw. “You kind of tied my hands on doing anything about it the night you got down on one knee.”

Link would have sworn he could have hit Rhett if it weren’t for his grasp on his wrist. Maybe that was the point. “You tied  _ my  _ hands by going to Slovakia.”

“I came back,” Rhett said, lowering his voice but not letting go.

“And I’m right  _ here _ ,” Link answered him, hooking the pinky of his free hand under the hem of Rhett’s shirt.

They stood, Link’s back against the wall, Rhett caging him in, daring the other one to make the move that would change things for them, that would shift the balance between wants and needs, no and  _ yes. _ And Link was absolutely terrified.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I.”

“You’re getting married.”

“I know.” Link didn’t have a good response to that.

“I wish I could be happier for you.”

Link  _ really  _ didn’t have a good response to  _ that. _ All he could do was show Rhett that this was what it was, that he’d made a choice just like Rhett had made a choice and he was so, so freakin’ mad that Rhett had made that choice. So he showed him. He showed him as he lifted up on his toes, kissed his lips, and bit one of them just hard enough. He showed him as he guided Rhett’s shirt off and over his head and let Rhett’s hands explore his body. He showed him when he said “I can’t believe you left me,” and Rhett promised he wouldn’t again, but it was too late. Too late, too late, too late because there was Christy, the fiancee he couldn’t hurt, and their morals, and the million reasons this never happened before.

“I hate you,” Link told him again, voice shaking as Rhett’s hands fumbled with the button on his jeans.

“I know,” Rhett told him, sliding Link’s jeans down.

“I love you,” Link said, after his lips found Rhett’s again, all the fury melting into tension they were finally figuring out how to resolve no matter how bad an idea it was.

“I know. I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so I'm... sort of? back. It feels weird as fuck to write Rhett and Link after this long so uh... be gentle with me maybe? Lol.


End file.
